Have you ever made a "mistake", only to find out that it seemed to be God pointing you in a direction that you wouldn't have gone in on your own? That just happened to me.
I just discovered as I began this post that the Scripture I read on Saturday was LUKE 6 instead of JOHN 6! I was SO excited about blogging today because of the nugget I found in Luke (that I thought was John), that I'm going to share it anyway! My weekend has been really busy and productive, but I apologize for neglecting the blog for two days. I'll catch everything up today.
"But why do you call Me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and not do the things which I say? Whoever comes to Me, and hears My sayings and does them, I will show you whom he is like: He is like a man building a house, who dug deep and laid the foundation on the rock. And when the flood arose, the stream beat vehemently against that house, and could not shake it, for it was founded on the rock. But he who heard and did nothing is like a man who built a house on the earth without a foundation, against which the stream beat vehemently; and immediately it fell. And the ruin of that house was great.” -Luke 6:46-49
According to this Scripture, obedience to God's will, plan, and purpose is the foundation we are to build our lives upon. Not our talents, or our giftedness. Talents and gifts have been given for the purpose of our obedience, but we are not to build the foundation of our lives on those by themselves. I see quite often, however, Christian lives, families, and ministries built upon what we know how to do, rather than what HE KNOWS HOW TO DO BY USING US.
Fasting, the practice of saying NO to food, builds in us the ability to say YES to God when He directs us. One could say that fasting builds up our foundation of obedience to God so that we don't build the spiritual foundation of our lives on what we can do, but on what HE can do.
What can I say about the services yesterday? Amazing. A grossly overused word...but still...amazing. As we brought our prayer requests before God yesterday and the whole Church prayed, the presence of the Holy Spirit was tangible. Not only were the worship teams hot, but there's nothing like the sound of hundreds of people praying over the prayer requests of the Church. I preached live at the South campus for the 4th week in a row and I really love the Spirit there. AND THEN...back to North campus and 21 people made decisions to follow Christ!
I love this! Awesome message!
Posted by: terah clark | January 24, 2012 at 12:02 AM